Simple Acro/Stab Only Arducopter Board?

[Robert Lefebvre]

Now that Stabilize Mode has been working so brilliantly for about a year, and with the upcoming "New Acro" mode seeming to work very well, I think we may have something that can compete in the simple sport copter market.

But for some people, the full system is expensive, complicated and kinda scary, even if they only want to use it for Acro and Stab mode.

Does anybody else think there might be a market for a stripped down board, <$100, that is pretty basic.  Just an AVR, MPU6000, and maybe a mag?  It could have as little at 4 PWM outputs, and 5 inputs, or PPM only input.  Expose a serial port for telemetry (could be a blue-tooth module).  And that's about it.

Can the IMU V3 do it?

[Gary McCray]

Sorry Robert, I couldn't help myself: 

[Robert Lefebvre]

Oh, I know I know.  And I already have an OP CC3D too.

Though I do wonder if our algorithm is better.  I've heard KK is "simple" but isn't actually stable or fly well.

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[john...@gmail.com]

KK2 flies very well thank you. :)

The price race is on with a vengeance..  My latest impulse was the Hubsan H107 which is a 120mm quad complete with radio, battery and charger for about $45. Flies incredibly smooth (best mico I have tried so far) and the radio sticks are surprisingly acurate. Flying indoor in a normal house is a breeze.

[Gary McCray]

Hi Robert,

I actually have the old original KK board Robert and no it definitely is not an APM, but I learned to fly multicopters on it.

I have heard this one is better, but still certainly no APM, cool LCD display though.

I genuinely think your idea has real merit, but the problem is there are already so many people playing in the shallow end of the pool.

Best Regards,

Gary

[Robert Lefebvre]

Yes, there is definitely a price war going on in this segment, and it's probably unlikely that 3DR could compete.  But on the other hand, maybe it could be considered a "gateway drug". ;)

In any case, I am curious, can the IMU V3 do it?

John, where is the best place to get the Hubsan?  I'm looking for something for my son to try.  It looks just like the Traxxas.  And I like that the controller should fit his hands well?

[john...@gmail.com]

I like Helidirect.com, but if you have the time to wait for shipping the cheapest would be dx.com or some other Chinese based shop.
If you are willing to pay a little extra, get the H107C model with a built in video camera. It's a whopping $72!!! :) http://www.helidirect.com/h107c-hubsan-x4-wvideo-recording-blackred-p-31686.hdx

As I mentioned the controller is suprisingly good and fits the hand very well.

[john...@gmail.com]

Regarding you original question. Sure the IMU V3 should be all that is needed to control a quad. In fact I did exactly that for with the older V2 and was able to get surprising good performance with very little drift by just accumulating gyros samples as fast as possible with a simple moving average filter for a simple 3-axis head-hold system like the original KK board. Did PPM input and four 100hz servo outputs. I have some code if you want to look at it, but the entire sensor section would have to be rewritten for the MPU6000 chip.

On Wednesday, September 4, 2013 11:05:38 PM UTC+2, robert.lefebvre wrote:

[Gareth Owen]

I currently have PCBs on order for a much simpler arducopter, one variation of which will be a basic model. I'll keep you updated once I've QA-ed them.

Best

Gareth

[Gareth Owen]

PS - my understanding is that arducopter has the angle boost feature which is absent on KK board.  I think the filtering of sensor data might be a bit more effective - but the difference in performance is probably marginal.  

Best

Gareth

[Aleksey Kharlanov]

Robert, there is already a lot of cheap boards which can run AC code. For example, RCTimer CRIUS AIOP board. it costs around 50$ and can handle all things (almost) which APM boards can. So there is no future on this market, IMHO.

Only if you will develop little simple cheap board based on STM32F4 CPU. My friends from Belarus, working on this board, it's Open Hardware, you can look it at https://github.com/SergDoc/Nev_MultirotorControl :)

среда, 4 сентября 2013 г., 22:31:54 UTC+3 пользователь robert.lefebvre написал: